Everywhere is green, whether a deep emerald, a pale light pastel or a vivid sap green. New growth is bursting from its buds and the soil. Today my heavy winter coat was too warm and gloves were discarded a week ago. I am still tucked under a blanket as I write this, but they only get discarded when my body switches from being cold to too hot in about June!
I hope, whatever your week has brought, that you’ve found some time to notice the world around you. If not, please stop reading now and look out of the window. I’m sure, even in a city you can find something natural to rest your eyes and mind on.
On to my week.
Noticing
Brief noticings; verges of golden daffodils, blankets of primroses, hints of celandines waiting to brighten the copse, muscari (grape hyacinths) starting to peek above the greenery, sparrows loudly broadcasting their thoughts from the hedge, robins battling at the feeder.
Last week, after the sunshine dried up all the rain (at least the falling stuff) we had a walk of sunshine, woodfulness and ChiffChaffery (as D described it). Coats were unzipped, hats removed and a good fifteen minutes were spent sitting on a log in the middle of the wood listening to a very loud and insistent Great Tit (who I eventually spotted in the tree opposite our log, I don’t think he approved of our extended tea break). I was just about to say I still hadn’t heard a Chiff Chaff when the bird brain cleared and I realised that the second voice we could hear, wasn’t a Great Tit needing lessons, but was indeed a Chiff Chaff. Hurray! These are another of the herald of Spring as one of the earliest migrants to arrive here (a few do now overwinter here in the south due to climate change but I’ve never heard them sing until spring). The Chiff Chaff is one for beginner bird listeners to start with as it helpfully says its name. It often gets a bit mixed up, more like Chiff Chaff Chaff Chiff Chaff, but once you’ve identified it unless you can blame Long Covid Bird Brain like me, it will be stuck in your mind, ready to announce spring.
This wood also brought lots of luscious moss to marvel closely at, a first but rather winter worn Red Admiral sunbathing and a family of Deer prancing across the field, only veering away at the last moment as they spotted us.
Other than this one, most of the dog walks were rather wet, but this at least enhanced the beauty of the willow catkins. A tree on the old landfill site called me over, so resplendent in its catkin finery from afar that I first thought it was blossom.
On one of the patches of tarmac, left over from previous uses of the site, pinpricks of white caught my eye. Even crouching down I could barely make out distinguishing features, my phone’s macro lens was needed to get photos. These tiny white flowers, half closed against the wet gloom only just head their heads above the moss they nestled amongst. This definitely needed higher level noticing skills as I walk here regularly and have just registered the greenery as moss reclaiming the tarmac intrusion. Later scrutiny of the photos with the help of the excellent (and free) Inaturalist app gave me a (probable) id of Common Whitlowgrass, a new notice for me. Tiny, but beautiful. Hopefully next time I’ll see them in the sun with their petals open.
Tadpole update
Not much had happened during the week, the clump had grown but we thought it might be a while until we saw anything wriggle. But yesterday, the joy of close regular observation paid off as my Stepmum, planting up more greenery in the pond, noticed some wriggling parties on the top of the jelly clumps.
I’ve never seen tadpoles this small, their tail is barely distinct from the body, not like the rotund versions we’re used to once they are big enough for the wide world of the pond. They are still staying within the safety of the spawn clump, eating through the jelly they’ve not long left with their brothers and sisters. While there are seemingly hundreds at the moment (I’m not going to count them!) it’s usual for only 1 in 50 (ish) to survive to adulthood, so we’ll just have to continue to watch them. A newt was also spotted so maybe some newt eggs will appear in the plants.
Creating
This week there has been very little green sketching but a lot of playing. Trees seem to have been left behind as inspiration with either water, or the downland landscape appearing in abstract waves and lines. I still feel rather stuck in where to go next, especially as there is the deadline of an exhibition in June. Now that the winter tree paintings seem to have withered away as their leaves appeared in real life, I don’t know where my inspiration will come from and I don’t know how the styles and techniques I developed last year will fit into that. For now, I have to trust that, if I keep playing, and keep getting outside, something will appear that I can run with.
At the moment, it’s water that appears in the first experiments of a studio session, when I let the ink and brushes move almost subconsciously. But once I get going, it’s landscape photos I bring up on my phone and abstract landscapes that fill my Pinterest boards and then my sketchbooks. The other day I played with a coastal landscape so maybe that could be a compromise! I think one issue is that I haven’t yet found a way to put the landscapes I love into my ‘style’. I guess more playing and more green sketching is the only way to encourage that to change.
I’m off to The Cairngorms in a few days and as I won’t be stomping through the glens and up the tops, my sketchbooks, pens, and paints will be coming with me. Thankfully there are lots of exceedingly picturesque points for me to sit, often next to a loch so plenty of opportunities for the landscapes to show me how they want me to portray them.
Reading
I’m now engrossed in the East Anglian countryside, reading Richard Mabey’s memoir ‘Nature Cure’. It’s a carefully, beautifully written book of his time spent recuperating from mental health issues and how nature supported that. I’ve had this on my reader for a while, first coming across it in a bookshop in Hay on Wye years ago. But something kept me from starting it, the same reason I initially shied away from books such as The Outrun and still haven’t finished The Salt Path. Many writers in the nature memoir genre weave their personal life through beautiful descriptions of nature. It is often negative circumstances that partner their engagement with nature, nearly always we see how nature has helped them back. Most memoirs do this, but, because of my own health struggles, I often don’t want to read about it. Nature writing is my sanctuary just as the real stuff is.
But when I do finally read these books, I often don’t find what I was worried about. Sometimes it is too much at that point, too close to my own situation or simply too harrowing to be what I need for a bedtime escape. That isn’t the case in The Nature Cure, Richard puts nature at the forefront, it is still the main character, through his eyes. This is when these memoirs find something in me too. He still writes very much from a personal point of view, his view of the situation, the new landscape he is now in compared to his previous home. We read about him pouring over maps to understand this flat, man made wilderness as he misses the woods of his Cotswold home. His close observation of a small geographical area reminds me of nature writers such as Stephen Moss and Mark Cocker. It is because any mention of Richard's own illness is carefully woven into this rather than putting it in the foreground that I am eagerly reading each line. But we still understand how this time, this landscape has helped restore him.
It was one of his personal reflections, on learning the East Anglian term ‘blonk’ for rough weather that really resonated with me.
“[blonk] seems perfectly to capture the feeling of being hit broadside by a bad spell. I was definitely blonked and beginning to sink under winter”
I too, until a week ago was feeling blonked, the grey duvet amplifying the physical symptoms this crappy condition gives me every day. It’s not entirely gone, just like the weather it’s ebbing and flowing but like Richard, during the period covered in the book (and I’ve not finished it yet) I’m managing to weather the storm and find better clothing. And maybe, I should trust that other nature memoirs like this can also show me a way though, just as nature has the writers.
What have you noticed this week? Have you taken any photos of spring bursting into life? Maybe you’ve drawn some daffodils? Do you like reading nature writing and memoirs, have they helped you deal with any issues in your own life?
Next week, I’ll either be posting directly from the Cairngorms (if we have the internet) or you’ll have to wait until I’m back south. Either way, I know I’ll have lots to report.
Loving the pink and ink on your art play x